


Shotguns and Rifles 2

by Luthor



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/F, This is Part 2 of a Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 03:09:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6312985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthor/pseuds/Luthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wasteland babes playing wasteland games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shotguns and Rifles 2

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tieflings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tieflings/gifts).



> This is a continuation of keelahh's [Shotguns and Rifles](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6199804). Natalie Carter is all hers.

It’s not the _stupidest_ decision she’s ever made.

Hazel knows what happens when you travel the wasteland alone. She’s heard the stories, seen the bodies, even. She knows one more gun on her side is one less raider with a crowbar in her skull. Still, walking the Commonwealth with a stranger is almost just as dangerous, and not something she wants to make a habit of. Hazel studies her, now, while she has a moment – this _stranger_ , five feet ahead of her, shotgun in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, both dangling precariously, swaying with her arms as she walks.

Hazel’s seen how she fights, the way she jumps into the fray – she who makes the loudest boom wins, until a supermutant with a death wish tries to plant a mini nuke on her shoulders. She’s quick, though, scrappy; Hazel had admired that from a distance, her sniper rifle aimed and her scope steady. Had admired other things, too.

The truth of it is, they’re an hour from Goodneighbour, still, and the sun is already beginning to set above Natalie’s plaited crown. Tonight, Hazel thinks she can stand for a little company.

By her side, Karma pushes her nose into a radstag’s empty corpse and gives a half-hearted woof. The noise draws Natalie’s attention. She smiles when she turns, places the cigarette against her bottom lip, and pouts her way through a drag. Hazel can appreciate the gesture.

“Sure you don’t want one?”

Natalie tips her own cigarette up, as though she’d rather share just the one, and Hazel can believe it. Few things are more sought after, but Hazel’s made a killing off other people’s addictions – doesn’t feel the need to start judging, now.

“I’m sure.”

Natalie pauses, waits for Hazel to catch up before blowing smoke out over one shoulder. The way the light of her pipboy reflects off her eyes turns them from blue to green, and then back again, within the space of a few seconds. When her gaze returns to Hazel’s, there’s a knowing look there – a smirk at her lips that both includes Hazel in the joke, and makes her its punchline.

“I’ve got something stronger, and I know you have the caps for it,” she says, and does not seem at all surprised when Hazel declines that, too. “Listen, Muscles, of all the shit out here that wants me dead, this is the last thing I gotta worry about.”

She takes another long drag from her cigarette to prove her point, and Hazel blows out a laugh as she moves past her.

“True enough,” she concedes when Karma is at her hip, again, on edge now as they enter a shadowy street. “Doesn’t mean I want to put a few holes in my own life expectancy, though.”

Behind her, there’s a sound like an indignant scoff-come-laugh, and Hazel’s lips pull into a smirk. Sure enough, Natalie rounds on her seconds later, jogging to keep up with Hazel’s wider strides. She holds her hand up without touching Hazel, and grins even as her eyes narrow.

“You saying I have a death wish, or somethin’?”

“I’m saying you charged into a tower of supermutants with one dog and a shotgun,” Hazel counters, and when Natalie’s hands land on her hips, she knows she’s probably heading into an argument that will get them fired upon from several different vantage points.

Natalie’s lips part at the accusation, but there’s nothing she can say to deny it. She pokes the tip of her tongue against her upper front teeth, sways back on one foot, and tries, “ _You’re_ out here with your dog, too. And I _had them_ , until that green freak pulled his nuke out.”

Hazel snorts at the phrase, and Natalie takes a final drag of her cigarette, flicking the smoking butt into an empty, open garbage bin. In the distance, the sound of gunfire echoes down an empty street, and both hold their breath to gauge just how far away it is. There’s the sound of rapid-fire, a scream, and an explosion that rocks through their chests even from this distance.

A stripped car, probably, having found a light.

In the following silence, Natalie checks the screen of her pipboy. “We’re not far off Goodneighbour,” she says, scraping her bottom lip between her teeth. When she looks back to Hazel, it’s with a new grin on her lips, and Hazel knows that the argument is settled or else forgotten – at least, for now. “Want to go see what all that noise was about?”

 

By the time they reach Goodneighbour, there’s fresh bruises beneath their clothes and blood on their hands. Magnolia has gathered a small crowd, but there’s a table by the back of The Third Rail that Nat leads them to right after pushing a drink into Hazel’s hand.

“You’ll buy a girl the next drink, right?” she winks, her body slipping around Hazel’s to find her own chair, and there’s no doubt that it isn’t exactly a suggestion, even if her hand lingers at Hazel’s hip, so long that she can feel each and every ring adorning her fingers.

“I’ve never been known to let a woman down before,” Hazel quips, taking her seat, and if Nat’s grin doesn’t inspire her own… _I’ll hold you to that_ , it says, and Hazel has no doubt that she will – with a shotgun at her back, if need be. “How’s your head?”

Nat shrugs through a sip from her beer bottle; when Hazel does the same, she can’t help but wince at the taste.

“Fucking hurts,” finally, dirty fingers running the edge of her bandage before dropping away. “Had worse.”

Hazel nods in agreement, and they drink again, almost toasting the sentiment.

That, and those lingering looks – the way that Nat makes an excuse to wrap her fingers around Hazel’s bicep (the way the _bicep_ makes an excuse to bulge beneath her grip), or how Hazel finds a sudden and ill-advised interest in the rings at Nat’s fingers, so as to run the tip of her own against each raised band and the soft skin in-between – become a theme for the night.

When there comes a suggestion of Hotel Rexford and a room for the night, Hazel isn’t entirely sure who’s the first to voice it, but neither turn it down.

 

Clair doesn’t bother with the hotel’s history, tonight.

She takes one look at the pair of them, shit-faced on more than the Rail’s cheapest booze, and drops a key into Hazel’s palm as though she’s trying especially hard to avoid all physical contact. She sees them off with a half-hearted, “ _you can’t just leave your dogs here_ ,” and Hazel follows Nat’s laughter up a dimly lit staircase to their room.

She’s too quick, even now, at least three drinks further gone than Hazel, and Hazel’s sure she took something while she skipped out to take a piss. She’d come back to Nat’s chair pushed right up against her own, and neither had made a move to shift it away again until they’d left.

Nat reaches the door first, lets herself in and barely gives it time to slam shut again before she pins Hazel to it. She’s all wet-lips and grasping hands, and Hazel would laugh into her mouth at the image of the pair of them – herself at least a head taller than Nat, and having to crane almost uncomfortably down to meet her in each kiss – were she not already breathless and trying to keep up.

Hazel plants her hands at Nat’s hips, trying to keep her grounded against the onslaught of tugging and tearing against her leathers. Several metal pieces of armour clunk to the floor by their feet, too loud on the bare floorboards, and Hazel groans against Nat’s lips in warning – hopes the straps won’t need repairing.

(Nat nips at her bottom lip in retaliation, and Hazel can’t say for sure that her warning’s been noted, or else thoroughly dismissed.)

She removes the rest of her upper-body armour herself, struggling with Nat’s help, her wily fingers trying to peel her clothes away from Hazel’s body before they’re ready to go. She gets Nat’s jacket off, at least, and they both take a careful, panting moment to set their guns aside. Hazel rests her sniper against a dresser, almost upright, while Nat sets her shotgun on the top.

It’s a show of trust that Hazel hasn’t performed in a while, and she can sense Natalie’s own unease at being naked, so to speak. In a show of good faith, she moves the pair of them away from the door and the armed dresser, her hands still at Nat’s hips and keeping her upright when she stumbles against a slightly-raised floorboard. Neither of them can reach for their guns, here, and while Hazel could probably squeeze the life out of her with one hand, she can also still feel the curved handle of a knife strapped to Nat’s thigh.

Whether it’s been forgotten or purposefully left behind – a warning, or a threat – Hazel isn’t sure. She has little time to consider it when Nat wraps both arms around her shoulders, securing a grip, and pulls herself up. Hazel has no other choice but to catch her beneath the ass, feeling slender but strong legs tighten around her waist, and when she looks up it’s to Nat’s smiling face, at least an inch above her.

She looks too pleased to be up there, having gained the advantage, and laughs against Hazel’s mouth when she tries to kiss her. But her laughter’s contagious, and it’s all Hazel can do to get them to the bed before she drops her. She lands heavily, Nat in her lap, and questing hands on either side of her under-shaved head.

“Slowly,” Hazel tells her, muffled by lips and tongue and teeth, laughing when she can barely get her words out, “slow down.”

“ _Catch up_ ,” Nat insists, pushing Hazel back, and reaches for the hem of her t-shirt.

For a moment, Hazel can only watch, slack-jawed and heavy-lidded as the t-shirt is removed, bunched into a ball, and tossed down the side of the bed. Natalie isn’t shy about her body, and Hazel doubts she’d ever have a reason to be. She drapes both arms above her plaited crown, displaying herself, eating up Hazel’s response.

“Don’t expect me to do all the work, do you?” she asks, finally, and Hazel trails a hand up her soft stomach, grinning. When she sits up again, it’s with one arm wrapped around Nat’s waist, and the other at her thigh, securing her grip. She moves them easily – efficiently – until Nat is on her back beneath her, further up the bed. “Ah, that’s useful,” Nat comments, breathless, before Hazel can press their mouths together.

They trade kisses until Hazel is lightheaded and too-aware of the way that Nat’s body arches up into her own. She pulls back with a kiss, another, a third, until she can push herself up with both hands. “Wait,” she tells Natalie, like she’s making her promise, “wait, wait a moment.”

Natalie tries to keep her there, hooks her hands around her shoulders like she can hold her still, but Hazel can be quick when she needs to be. She slips free, and can’t help but laugh again at Natalie’s exaggerated groan – at the booted foot that shoves playfully at her hip.

She’s halfway down the bed in seconds, and pulling at the lacings in her boots in her rush to get them off. There’s armour here, too, keeping her shins safe, but the straps are much more complicated than those around her arms, and it takes her several cursing minutes before she can work herself free.

As the last piece of shin armour clunks to the floor beneath her, Hazel turns her victorious grin on Nat—and her face promptly falls. Spread out with her head between both straw pillows, oblivious and uncaring of her state of undress, Nat releases a quiet exhale and then murmurs in her sleep.

Hazel watches her a moment, incredulous, half-certain that this is Nat’s way of punishing her for taking so long. She’ll crack an eye open any second, Hazel is sure, and laugh with all of her teeth showing. Hazel crawls up the bed to be sure, pokes at Nat’s stomach, nips at the underside of her jaw. Nat groans in her sleep, again, tilting her head away, and Hazel realises that she’s not putting it on at all.

Watching her, Hazel can’t help but feel surprised by the weight of her own disappointment; she’d been hoping for some stress relief, if nothing else. Nat had seemed like the type of woman who’d give her a workout, and yet… She looks content, though, sleeping before her like she’s no reason to be cautious. Hazel could leave her here with the room key, they’ve paid for the night.

She could just as easily rob her, too, and yet she already knows that she won’t.

She’s inspired, perhaps, by this sudden and unwarranted show of trust. So much so that she twists onto her back, fits herself into the space left over to Nat’s right, and pulls a pillow further beneath her head with one arm wrapped beneath it. She should leave – she will leave soon, she’ll just rest her eyes, maybe. She thinks she can hear rain outside, hard and hollow against the boarded up windows, and Karma doesn’t deserve another cold-river bath this early in the week.

Staying the night is the worst idea that Hazel’s had all day, and there’ve been an uncommonly high number of them already.

Still.

She casts a glance towards her rifle, more than several feet out of reach, and considers getting up to move it closer. It seems like such a waste of effort while her limbs are this heavy, when her eyelids are already half-closed.

Nat makes her decision for her, in the end, shifting closer with another unintelligible murmur, only to sling one arm across Hazel’s waist. She’d be easy to move, Hazel thinks. She doubts she’d even wake her if she tried. But she’s warm – she’s _comfortable_ , even pressed flush against her like this, and Hazel is tired.

Against all better judgement – against every rule that she’s as good as burned into her own brain – she falls so easily into the bed with Nat’s breath steady and constant at her throat, like the hush of a long-forgotten lullaby.

It’s the stupidest decision that she’s ever made, and yet, even despite herself, Hazel sleeps.


End file.
